Chapter 7
Luke thought his mother was buried in Newark.
A small cemetery behind a church.
A marker with her name.
Grace drove him there after Isabella died because no one else had come.
Now Milena claimed even that was a lie.
I wanted to drag the truth out of her.
Instead, I called Matteo.
Then Detective Harris, the federal liaison.
We went to the cemetery the next morning with a court order.
Luke insisted on coming.
“No,” I said first.
He lifted his chin.
“She was my mom.”
I had no answer to that.
So he came.
He stood beside me while workers opened the grave.
Grace held his hand.
I stood close enough to catch him if the world broke.
The coffin inside was cheap.
Light.
Too light.
When they opened it, Grace gasped.
Luke made no sound.
Inside were stones wrapped in a sheet.
No body.
No Isabella.
Luke looked at me.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know yet.”
His face went blank.
That scared me more than tears.
Milena had stolen his father.
Carlo had stolen his money.
Now someone had stolen his mother’s grave.
Detective Harris approached.
“Mr. Torrisi, we need to search church records.”
“Do it.”
The priest remembered the burial.
He was old, but fear sharpened his memory.
“A man arranged everything,” he said.
“What man?”
He looked at my face and trembled.
“Carlo Vitale.”
Milena’s brother.
Luke whispered, “Why would he move her?”
Grace wrapped an arm around him.
I looked at the empty coffin.
Because dead women still tell stories if buried in the wrong place.
Back at the estate, Rocco found Carlo’s hidden account.
Payments to a private clinic.
A hospice nurse.
A funeral director.
And one property outside the city.
An old farmhouse in Pennsylvania.
Registered to a shell company.
I knew before anyone said it.
Isabella had not simply died poor and alone.
She had been hidden.
Managed.
Maybe watched.
That night, Luke knocked on my study door.
He held the old photograph.
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you find her?”
The question cut clean.
“Because I believed a lie that hurt less than searching.”
He nodded slowly.
May you like
“That’s not good.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
